Masteries

Offense:
9

Defense:
21

Utility:
0

Riven, The Exile

This guide will make your opponents piss themselves when they see you coming.

Riven is built to deliver heavy melee dps from her Abilities. All of her abilities scale from AD, and scale well.

Riven is NOT an attack speed champ, and Riven is not a crit champ. Her primary source of damage is intended to be her Abilities. Abilities do not crit and Abilities are not subject to a swing timer.

That being said, you want to slap as much AD on Riven as you can, BUT you also want to make sure you can survive being in the middle of battle while dishing out the pain. Therefore, this guide will show you how to deliver heavy Ability damage, and sustain yourself in combat through increased HP, Lifesteal, and resistances.

You will own your opponents with this guide.

Changelog

Update 9/17/11: Adding Frozen Mallet as optional the last item purchase. Phantom Dancer or Frozen Mallet both have their places in the last item slot. See Items Section for details.

Runes

Marks- Greater Mark of Desolation - Best Armor pen bang for your buck

Seals- Greater Seal of Resilience - You are going to be in the thick of things, and especially early on, these help you stay alive while dishing out the pain.

Glyphs- Greater Glyph of Focus - Cooldown Reduction is your friend, your abilities are on pretty short Cooldowns already, some extra CDR helps you trigger them more often.

Masteries

Defense tree heavy, the goal is to be able to stay in the fight so your abilities can dish the damage. Riven scales completely off AD, and all her abilities are physical damage. Taking a defensive Mastery approach will allow you to dish out the pain.

The Defensive Masteries along with your rune buildout make you formidable in the early into mid game. You will rack up early game kills on opponents who dont realize just how hard you are to kill, while you unload Broken Wings and Ki Burst on them.

Items

This has changed drastically since my initial build out. Keeping in mind that everything Riven does scales off AD, we are going to go Double Bloodthister (+200 AD when both are filled, with ridiculous life steal), Atmogs for HP and AD scale from HP, late game you will sell your Wriggles Lantern in favor of Phantom Dancer, to Move speed and added Crit combined with the rest of this build = GG.

Quick note on Infinity Edge. You may be wondering why I skipped on IE, especially since Riven scales off AD and IE gives you 80 along with some nice crit etc. I skip on the Ie becuase BloodThisters give you better AD for your buck. Not only are they cheaper, but once full, they give you 100AD a piece. This makes Blood Thisters the better buy.

Frozen Mallet vs Phantom Dancer.
The last item slot in this build replaces the first item you build, Wriggles Lantern. At this point it is late game and this last Tier 3 item slot is situational based on the position your team is in.

Phantom Dancer is fantastic for its added mobility, and additinal AS (note Riven is not an AS champ, but a little bit of AS will help you). I dont know mathematically what the number is, but there is a point where AS undermines the useability of your Ablities, which is what Rivens primary damage output is based around. But adding this bit of AS from Phantom Dancer will increase your damage output between cooldowns.

Frozen Mallet is another great item that plays along with the Atmogs combo. Frozen Mallet further increases your durability, and gives you a nice AD boost which your skills will further scale from, with the added bonus of the % chance on hit slow. This makes its near impossible for an enemy to escape you once you have engaged them.

I wont overload you with tons of senarios. The most basic way to handle Riven is to Q-hit-Q-hit-Q your way into battle against your opponent. Immediately as the last Q hit lands and the enemy gets knocked back, pop W to stun and damage them, then use E to get out and retreat. Rinse and repeat and you have a nice harrass which will result in a kill.

QQQWE to harrass until you get your Ultimate, then it becomes RQQQWRQQQE

Lets discuss the Ultimate for a moment. Once you pop Blade of the Exile(BotE), Riven becomes buffed. The R button then gives you a skill called Wind Slash. Wind Slash is your AD, conal AE bomb. You can only use this ability once after you pop BotE. Using Wind Slash will not consume the rest of the BotE buff, so you can use at at any point during the 15 seconds the BotE buff is active.

Once you hit level 6 and get you BotE dont be shy about using it, it's on a quick cooldown. Pop BotE, engage with Broken Wings combo, pop Ki Burst use Wind Slash, Broken Wings combo, then exit the mix using Valor (Your very short range dash, and shield buff).

Summoner Spells

A case can definetly be made for Clense. If you get CC'd when you are in the dogpile, chances are good you will not get out. With that said, I do prefer Flash and Exhaust.

Flash: Gets you out of so many bad situations. I dont need to go into why Flash rules.

Exhaust: Well we pointed this in uor Masteries so this bad boy does the following. Reduces Movement Speed by 40%, Attack dmg dealth by 70%, and ability and item damage dealt by 35%, reduces target armor and magic resist by 10 for 3.5 seconds. Ya, pretty awesome in so many situations.

Summary

Riven can bring them pain and fill the melee AD spot on a team nicely. Her combos can hit like a truck, Valor is an excellent mobility skill, and Ki Burst on its short cooldown is useful in so many ways.

League of Legends is a team based, real time strategy game set in a mythical world of swords & magic where epic battles decide the fate of mystical nations. Game players take on the role of a Summoner who conjures and controls champions to fight for them at the Institute of War. During game play champions gain experience and items to enhance their skills and abilities. How players develop and play their champions can be the difference between a crushing defeat or a glorious victory!